Blackjack is one of the most popular card games played on-line or in casinos. In the conventional game of Blackjack, each player receives two cards face up after wagering. The dealer gets one card down and one card face up. The players may choose to take more cards or stay with the two original cards dealt. Once all players have made their decisions, the dealer may take another card. The dealer will draw cards in accordance with the house rules, usually being that the dealer has to draw cards until the sum of the cards is at least seventeen. The player wins the wagered amount if the sum of the player's cards is closer to 21 than the sum of the dealer's cards, without going over.
If, on the initial deal, the dealer has an ace or a ten card (a face card or a ten) face up, then the hole card is checked by the dealer. If it completes a Blackjack (equals 21), then the dealer wins and the game is over. A tie is a push.
The full official rules of Blackjack are incorporated herein.
If the Blackjack game is played on a dedicated video gaming machine in a licensed establishment or played on-line using a general purpose computer, such as a smartphone or other computer, the rules are exactly the same but typically there is only one player playing against a programmed “dealer.”
For more excitement, it would be desirable to provide additional betting possibilities for the Blackjack game.
A side bet for Blackjack is known and is called “Lucky Lucky.” A complete pay table for the side bet is found at the web site http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/appendix/8/. The most pertinent Lucky Lucky side bet is for the card combination of 6, 7, and 8, in any suit, using the player's two dealt cards and the up card of the dealer. This pays 30 times the side bet.
This is not a good concept for a side bet since it is too rare an occasion (a probability of 0.002585), and relies on the dealer's up card. In order to make the side bet more attractive to the player, the Lucky Lucky pay table adds seven more possibilities for winning the side bet game, using different combinations of cards from the player's two cards and the dealer's up card. There is even another winning combination of 6, 7, and 8 using the player's and dealer's cards where the combination has to be in the same suit. Each combination has a different pay out. This makes the side bet game complicated and detracts from the momentum of the game since some of the winning combinations occur frequently and only pay double the side bet. The side bet is usually lower than the wager for the Blackjack game.
Therefore, what is needed is a variation on such a side bet game that is optimally designed to be simple, has a reasonable expectation of occurring, does not detract from the main game, is profitable to the “house”, and still pays an amount that entices the player to make the side bet.